#byefelicia

Years after her murder, the investigation in the death of Tina Harmon has been closed.

The results of DNA tests in Wayne County confirm Bob Buell killed Harmon.

Robert Buell was executed in 2002 for his conviction in the rape and strangulation of 11-year-old Krista Harrison.

Krista was kidnapped from a park across the street from her home on July 17, 1982. Investigators said she was sexually assaulted before she was strangled. Her body was found six days later along a country road.

Trusted Member

I hope you took an eternity's worth of sunscreen with you, you piece of something I would scrape off my shoe

A bit about what happened to Tina (article is 2008)

WOOSTER —

In 1981, the body of 12-year-old Tina Marie Harmon was found dumped near an oil well in Bethlehem Township.
The Creston girl had been raped and strangled and then neatly laid near the side of the road where anyone could see.
Harmon was the first of four area girls to be found dead in the early 1980s. In July 1982, Krista Harrison, of Marshallville, was abducted from a baseball field. Turtle trappers discovered her body in a field in Holmes County six days later. That September, 7-year-old Dawn Marie Hendershot, of Massillon, was abducted on her way home from Gorrell Elementary.
Another year passed, and it happened again. This time to Deborah Kaye Smith, a 10-year-old Massillon girl who vanished from the city streets. Her body was found more than a month later along the banks of the Tuscarawas River.
Robert Buell, of Clinton, was later convicted of Harrison’s death. He died by lethal injection in 2002.
Police believed Buell to also be responsible for both Harmon and Smith’s deaths, but he was never charged with the crime.
Today, Harmon’s family is still haunted by the murder. They say the case is unresolved and that authorities have failed to bring them closure.
“I want to know who killed my sister,” Randy Harmon, Tina’s oldest brother, said Tuesday to a room of reporters.
Randy, who believes new technology might finally resolve his kid sister’s death, plans to ask the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office to continue its investigation.
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Tina was a sixth-grader who loved cats and scored well in school. She was a good singer, her family said, and had potential to make a career of it.
“She was a very tough little girl,” said aunt Ruth Hatfield. “She used to fight with her brothers all the time.”
On Oct. 29, 1981, Tina got a ride from Creston to Lodi from family members. Several witnesses remember seeing her there.
It was the last time, however, that she would be seen alive. Five days later she was found dead.
The investigation eventually turned to two men – Ernest Holbrook Jr. and Herman Ray Rucker, who ran in similar circles as Tina.
Holbrook and Rucker were convicted in 1982 for the rape and murder of Tina Marie Harmon. The jury convicted the men based on the testimonies of two witnesses, but with little physical evidence.
The witnesses, Curtis Maynard and Susan Sigler, claimed that Holbrook and Rucker admitted to them that they killed Harmon after she denied them sex.
But not long after the conviction, Maynard recanted his testimony. Sigler was also found to be a poor witness. She had filed a false rape report in a nearby county.
Rucker received a new trial and was acquitted in 1983. And when new evidence surfaced in the case a year later, prosecutor’s dropped their charges against Holbrook.
Enter Robert Buell, a city of Akron employee.
Two months after Deborah Smith’s body was found on the river banks, police received a call from a neighbor of Buell’s. A 28-year-old Damascus woman, the neighbor reported, had escaped Buell’s home after being abducted, raped and held captive there.
Police eventually linked carpet fibers from Buell’s van to those found on Harrison’s and Harmon’s bodies. Buell was charged with Harrison’s rape and murder, but always denied harming her. He also denied harming Smith and Harmon.
Because the fibers from Buell’s van matched those on Harmon’s body and because candles found in his home were identical to those found near Smith’s body, police believed that he was responsible for all three murders.
Buell, however, was only charged with Harrison’s death.
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Active Member

I'm very liberal, and I still think that the state should be able to fry these bastards (as long as there is good clear evidence proving their guilt.) In fact, I think we should institute the death penalty for rapists and child molesters as well. I don't think we kill enough people.

Veteran Member

I'm very liberal, and I still think that the state should be able to fry these bastards (as long as there is good clear evidence proving their guilt.) In fact, I think we should institute the death penalty for rapists and child molesters as well. I don't think we kill enough people.

If they didn't hold water, they DP wouldn't be on its way to being abolished. And do you realize it's been conservative legislators that have largely proposed legislation to temporarily or indefinitely stop the program in their states? So much for your baseless "liberal" argument.

Well-Known Member

I'm very liberal, and I still think that the state should be able to fry these bastards (as long as there is good clear evidence proving their guilt.) In fact, I think we should institute the death penalty for rapists and child molesters as well. I don't think we kill enough people.

Death, horror, torture

Authorities have long suspected that Robert Buell, who was executed for the 1982 abduction and murder of 11-year-old Krista Lea Harrison, also of Wayne County, was behind the disappearance and murder of Tina Marie Harmon as well.

But it wasn't until the results of evidence collected in the Harmon case were tested under the modern microscopes of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification that their suspicions were proved to be correct.

Harmon's family asked authorities in 2008 to take another look at the evidence gathered in the case.

After his conviction in the Harrison case, authorities always considered Buell, a former Akron city worker, as their prime suspect in the Harmon killing. Buell, at age 62, denied killing Harrison as he was about to be executed in 2002.

Buell was never charged with Harmon's murder.

The Beacon Journal, in a 1984 investigative project that filled 14 newspaper pages, profiled the convictions of Herman Rucker and Ernest Holbrook Jr., both of whom had been sentenced to life in prison for Harmon's death.